There's An Organization That Wants LESS Funding for AIDS Research

I've posted plenty of stories here discussing the need for people and legislators to move away from apathy and devote more funding to HIV/AIDS research, but to my disgust I actually ran across an organization devoted to REDUCING funding.

This group is called FAIR (Fair Allocation in Research), and the following information is from their website.

The group was founded by Dr Richard Darling

a California dentist, founded the FAIR Foundation after surviving hepatitis C, diabetes, cirrhosis and cancer of the liver, coma, heart attack, hepatorenal syndrome, Muscular Dystrophy (myasthenia gravis) and three liver transplant operations.

That's quite a list, one that is difficult to believe. He was motivated by the following:

In 1999 when Dr. Darling was becoming very ill yet again, he viewed an ABC network 20/20 segment by reporter John Stossel (a noted right-wing advocate) entitled “Disease Politics.” It was produced with facts supplied by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and graphically illustrated the unfair governmental bias that significantly favors AIDS over all other diseases, including the sixteen that kill more Americans than AIDS.

“Disease Politics” introduced a courageous Parkinson’s Disease patient, Joan Samuelson, and her unending efforts to get more funding for Parkinson’s Disease, which is grossly under funded by the NIH. Dr. Darling was so inspired by Ms. Samuelson’ fight for justice and John Stossel’s reporting that he vowed to start a national organization to correct the unfair NIH and Congressional allocation inequities if he was blessed with a third transplant. Dr. Darling received the “Gift of Life” and, thus, the FAIR Foundation was born.

A prime example of what they consider a funding "inequity" is included in the introduction on their website:

The favoritism given AIDS over all other diseases, including the sixteen diseases that kill a million more Americans than AIDS annually

Although further down on their home page they acknowledge that mortality rate should not be the only determining factor for research funding, those numbers appear to be the rationalization for their push to reroute funding from AIDS research.

Please understand, like most of you lives of people I love has been impacted by several of the 16 diseases that rank higher than the AIDS mortality rate, and the more resources that can be devoted to preventing and curing them the better.

It is clear to me that this effort is motivated by bigotry being disguised with statistics. From a Christian perspective, this is one way Satan uses people to do his work, disguising hate and prejudice in a way that it can become more presentable and palateable.

This hate must be met with a vigilant effort to reach out and love those who are impacted by the HIV/AIDS virus and the desire to prevent others from enduring this still deadly and debilitating disease.

Jesus reached out to the lepers and others considered socially unacceptable, and if we want to follow His example, we must do the same.